1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a distributed printing system that distributes a print job to multiple printers on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In currently popular printing systems, each user is allowed to selectively use multiple printing devices connected to an identical network. A distributed printing technique applicable to such printing systems has been proposed to distribute a print job to plural printing devices for simultaneous distributed printing and thereby complete execution of the whole print job within a short time (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Gazette No. 2002-215368).
A distributed printing system includes multiple printers, a client computer that creates print jobs, and a distribution source printer that has distributed printing control functions and is different from the multiple printers. The printers, the client computer, and the distribution source printer are interconnected via a network. The distribution source printer receives a print job sent from the client computer, selects one or plural printers as distribution destinations among the multiple printers, and distributes the print job to the selected distribution destination printers.
In this distributed printing system, the distribution source printer naturally has general printing functions to print a received print job (standard printing) by the distribution source printer itself without distributing the print job, like the other printers. The distribution source printer is thus required to identify each print job received from the client computer as a print job for distributed printing or a print job for standard printing. In one applicable technique to the distributed printing system, the distribution source printer identifies each received print job as a print job for distributed printing or a print job for standard printing, based on a receiver port number (hereafter may be simply referred to as ‘port number’) specified in transmission of the print job.
In the distributed printing system of this technique that utilizes the port number for identification of a print job, the client computer is required to specify a port number corresponding to a print mode, for example, a standard print mode or a distributed print mode, before transmission of each print job.
A functional module according to a printer driver program installed in the client computer refers to setting information or properties for the printer driver program and specifies a corresponding port number. Multiple different printer drivers with properties including port numbers corresponding to individual print modes should accordingly be provided in the client computer.
There is a similar requirement in another applicable technique to the distributed printing system, where the distribution source printer identifies each received print job as a print job for distributed printing or a print job for standard printing, based on a printing protocol adopted for transmission of the print job.